Rolls Royce appeases investors on Trent 1000 problem

In a briefing with the company’s investors on June 15, 2018, Rolls Royce CEO Warren East commented on the issue currently affecting the Trent 1000 engine developed by the British manufacturer.

Reaffirming what Rolls Royce said on March 23, 2018, following Bloomberg suspicions that other engines could be affected, East declared there were no signs indicating that the Trent XWB engine, equipping the Airbus A350 family, could have the same compressor blade defect.

The CEO pointed at the fact that the Trent XWB engine has a different architecture than the Trent 1000, and was designed with more modern tools. However, he remains cautious as the XWBs did not undergo enough maintenance checks yet. Rolls Royce should investigate more in this variant.

As for the Trent 7000 engine powering the A330neo, East remained convinced that it will not be affected either. However, as the two designs are similar, any improvement to the Trent 1000 design should be applied to the Trent 7000.

Rolls Royce also confirmed that inspections on the Trent 1000 Package C equipping the Boeing 787 Dreamliners will cost more than expected. With an added £100 million to the estimated price, the total cost should be of £440 million for the sole year of 2018.

As for the Package B engines, the company confirmed they were indeed affected by the same problem of corrosion on the compressor blades. However, the problem happens later in the life cycle of the engine than in Package C case.

The number of Dreamliners grounded for inspections is starting to decline, according to East. If the company estimated to ground 50 planes at the time, Rolls Royce CEO said that number was never reached, and was currently going down.

Given the drastic measures of restructuring announced on June 14, 2018, Rolls Royce declared it was “well-placed” to exceed its forecast of a £1 billion cash flow by 2020.